A new plasma printing technology from the Leibniz Institute for Plasma Science and Technology (INP) in Greifswald, Germany enables the precise modification of surfaces at extremely small scale. INP researcher Laura Barillas-Mora has received funding for the further development of the plasma source that is used in the system, from the DATIpilot innovation programme of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). The new plasma printing process enables materials such as metals, polymers, fibres and paper to be…

In order to support nature and social projects, the artist Bruno Wilbert, who has been living in Madeira for 5 years, is making a large number of his objects available free of charge for the realisation of international campaigns in favour of selected nature and social projects. As part of his MAXIMINIMALISMUS series, Bruno Wilbert created the compact sculptures entitled TOGETHERNESS a few months ago – the hand-sanded and oiled sculptures with embossed monograms are made of high-quality eucalyptus wood…

ARPA-H awards Columbia researchers nearly $39M to develop a living knee replacement. Columbia biomedical engineers are collaborating with orthopedic surgeons to build a living replacement knee to be tested in clinical trials within five years. A team of researchers from Columbia University Irving Medical Center (CUIMC) and Columbia Engineering has been awarded up to a $38.95 million contract from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) to build a living knee replacement from biomaterials and human stem cells, including a patient’s own cells. ARPA-H is…

Renewed slump of ship transits in the Red Sea after slight stabilization. The conflict in the Middle East is changing international trade routes at sea. The number of container ships passing through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal fell again in February compared to January. At the same time, the number of ships around the Cape of Good Hope off Africa tripled. However, no greater negative consequences are to be expected for the global economy as a whole or…

MHH haematologist Dr Florian Perner has been awarded 2.2 million euros from the Emmy Noether Programme of the German Research Foundation (DFG) for his research into epigenetic changes in blood stem cells and their role in the development of blood cancer. Leukocytes – colloquially known as white blood cells – protect us from pathogens and tumour cells. While their proliferation and renewal is normally strictly regulated, this process gets out of control in some people: the immature precursors of the…

Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Early Career Award 2024 goes to Johannes Karges. Dr. Johannes Karges (31), a chemist from Ruhr University Bochum, will be awarded the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Early Career Award 2024, the Scientific Council of the Paul Ehrlich Foundation announced today. The prizewinner discovered how platinum-containing chemotherapeutics accumulate in tumor tissue, and how, from here, they can be activated using either light or ultrasound as triggers. Karges already provided preclinical proof of these methods, whose…

The High Altitude and Long Range Research Aircraft, or HALO, has been making unparalleled contributions to Earth system research for over a decade. Not only that, but with its global measurement campaigns, the high-altitude research aircraft is a symbol of international scientific cooperation on key issues relating to atmospheric processes and their global impact on the climate. Under the leadership of meteorologist Professor Manfred Wendisch, Leipzig University has now secured 4.6 million euros from the German Research Foundation (DFG) to…

For this contribution to Sustainable Chemistry, the international expert jury of the Innovation Challenge honoured Indian the start-up Schutzen Chemical Group with the ISC3 Innovation Award 2023, endowed with 15,000 euros. If South Mumbai is flooded in seven years, 20 million people will lose their homes. The number of cases of cancer in children will rise by 37 percent this year. The mountains of garbage in his homeland are getting bigger and bigger. As one of eight finalists in the…

ERC grant for Dresden quantum physicist Hassinger. Elena Hassinger, a renowned low-temperature physicist from the Würzburg-Dresden Cluster of Excellence ct.qmat, has been awarded €2.7 million in funding by the European Research Council. This ERC Consolidator Grant will support her pioneering work on unconventional superconductors, which could lead to a breakthrough in topological quantum computing. Over the next five years, Hassinger’s research in Dresden will delve into the enigmatic properties of cerium-rhodium-arsenic (CeRh2As2) and explore similar quantum materials under extreme laboratory…

The MHH research project iGUARD is also successful in the third round of the SPRIND Challenge and receives follow-up funding to develop antiviral RNA-based drugs. Despite successful vaccine development, there are still no effective drugs for most viral diseases. In order to achieve a breakthrough, the Federal Agency for Breakthrough Innovations launched the SPRIND Challenge two years ago. The iGUARD (integrated Guided Ultrafast Antiviral RNAi Drug Development) project has already been funded twice and, as a finalist in the third…

1.5 Million Euros for Berlin Researcher… Dr. Dragomir Milovanovic, a neuroscientist at DZNE’s Berlin site, has been awarded an European Research Council (ERC) “Starting Grant” worth 1.5 million euros to investigate biophysical phenomena relevant to brain diseases in a groundbreaking research project. Ultimately, the goal is to better understand the behavior of aberrant protein inclusions in neurodegenerative diseases. Human cells are complex entities comprising proteins, lipids and a wide number of other molecular spieces, some of them forming organized compartments,…

A surprising mechanism that makes some cancers treatment-resistant has been discovered by Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian investigators.  The mechanism, which involves the shuttling of messenger RNAs (mRNAs) from the nucleus to the cytoplasm, ultimately facilitates DNA repair in cancer cells. These cancer cells can thereby thwart treatments aimed at damaging their DNA. In a project encompassing both fundamental research and clinical studies they demonstrated that a combination of approved chemotherapies, one of which targets the DNA repair-facilitating mechanism, could…

The European Research Council (ERC) has awarded a 10 million Euro Synergy Grant to the project “UNIVERSE+: Positive Geometry in Particle Physics and Cosmology” led by a collaborative team with Max Planck directors Johannes Henn from the Max Planck Institute for Physics in Munich and Bernd Sturmfels from the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences Leipzig. “Our team aims to create a new mathematical language” says Johannes Henn, the coordinating principal investigator of the project. “The goal is…

Physicists Win Prestigious IBM Award. Quantum challenge completed: A team of five, headed by quantum physicist Professor Ronny Thomale of the Cluster of Excellence ct.qmat based at two universities in Würzburg and Dresden, secured second place in the international IBM Quantum Open Science Prize. The Würzburg research group managed to solve this year’s competition challenge on quantum magnetism. They devised an algorithm enabling IBM’s 16-qubit quantum chip to be trained to outperform conventional computing capabilities. This achievement could pave the…

What are the societal impacts of a company’s CO₂ emissions? What is the value of research and development for the community? To enable comparison and valuation of non-financial metrics, Impact Valuation factors translate sustainability figures into a uniform currency. However, organizations use different methods to evaluate their sustainability performance and most of these methods are not publicly available. With a strong commitment to comparability and transparency, WifOR has published its Impact Valuation factors. “Our mission is to set standards in measuring…

The negative outlook of mid-July has been confirmed: The values of the Kiel Trade Indicator for world trade and for the trade of the major economies are all negative in July compared to June (adjusted for price and seasonal effects). Ship movements in the first half of the month already did not bode well, and the forecast is even worse now that the data for the full month is available. The main reason for this is likely to be the…